1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an apparatus and method for manually feeding single sheets of paper into an otherwise automated printer, typewriter or similar automatic printing devices in which a drive roller advances the paper through the printer. More particularly, this invention relates to a method and apparatus for leading edge alignment of manually inserted paper prior to printing thereon.
2. Art Background
Various types of office machines including typewriters, printers, some facsimile machines, and the like, allow the manual insertion of individual sheets of paper. In the process of inserting each single sheet of paper, it is critical to the quality of the output printed page that the paper be correctly aligned before the printing operation begins. The typical method for inserting and aligning manually inserted paper in the prior art involves first inserting the paper into the printer until it engages the nip, that is, the intersection of the drive roller and an idle roller or spring finger, and thereafter, rotating the drive roller to hold the paper in place. Ideally, with careful insertion of the paper using the paper guides which are sometimes provided, the paper is substantially aligned; however, in many cases, the paper still ends up misaligned. After the paper is inserted, the drive roller is rotated which transports the paper to the printing position in alignment with the printing head. In the prior art, when the paper is transported into place, the leading edge of the paper can be visually checked for alignment against a paper guide. If the paper is not aligned it may be manually aligned with the paper guide by temporarily releasing the tension on the paper, and manually repositioning the paper to align with the paper guide. This system has the obvious drawback of being time consuming, tedious, and only as accurate as the person performing the manual alignment.
The present invention seeks to overcome the deficiencies in the prior art manual methods of paper insertion and alignment in providing an automatic paper feed and alignment device for such manually inserted paper, in accordance with the description of the invention presented below.